Air India Express has further cemented its Southeast Asian connect as the Air India’s subsidiary and a low-cost carrier based out of Kochi has recently announced the launch of a flight service to Coimbatore from New Delhi, with onward connection to Singapore, from next month.
The services on the Delhi-Coimbatore-Singapore route will be operated three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, beginning November 18 in the next month, the international budget arm of the state-owned Air India has mentioned in a media release.
Currently, AIE already operates from three cities of Tamil Nadu and Coimbatore will be the fourth city in its route network. As a carrier, Air India Express focuses on Southeast Asian and the Middle eastern destinations, and presently operates around 550 flights per week to 29 destinations. Also, it operates to 16 Indian cities and 13 international airports and comprises of a 23 aircrafts fleet of 23 Boeing 737-800 planes.
Given all the noise around the disinvestment, and the speculations around it, of the national carrier, it is easy to lose sight of the plan ahead. Air India management has done well to continue with their expansion plans undeterred. Not many days ago, Air India had announced direct flights to Copenhagen, beside launching non-stop services to several other European countries in the past months. Government level policy issues should not impact operational proficiency. In case of Air India, it seems it is not.
